Saturday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts.

This year’s edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half the states and the nation’s capital. Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color, harmed the most by the drug war, reap financial benefits from legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform.

(T)he prevailing explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottomed buddies from San Rafael High School, in California’s Marin County north of San Francisco, who called themselves “the Waldos.” A friend’s brother was afraid of getting busted for a patch of cannabis he was growing in the woods at nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest the crop, the story goes.

During fall 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group would meet up at the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke a joint and head out to search for the weed patch. They never did find it, but their private lexicon — “420 Louie” and later just “420” — would take on a life of its own.

  • Thetimefarm
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    2 months ago

    This is a terrible attitude to have, not necessarily the anti corporate stuff, but we absolutely shouldn’t be associating the queer community with random violence. Self and community defense are there own issues as there is a higher rate of violence against LGB and especially T people. Anything you can do to help a trans person leave the state of Florida would be infinitely more useful than throwing a brick at a cop. Anything like that will just be used as ammunition by the people trying to say that trans people, drag queens, etc are somehow dangerous to society. It doesn’t matter to most people in Florida that fascists are orders of magnitude more violent, anything done by a trans person will be amplified to an extreme by right wing media.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The violence absolutely shouldn’t be happening today but we need to not forget it also. Our rights are forged in a lot of things including absolutely wrecking shit when we’re cracked down on. But it was also a variety of other things including getting political ins, getting conversations with psychologists, making consistent demands, and our moms. Like seriously I think we understate how much moms of all people got us rights. When queer people were hated stories of mothers mourning their children made people give a shit about AIDS.

      But yeah the violence is part of it. But save your brick for a proud boy this June. Don’t worry, you’ll see one.